_Love in Several Masks_ was produced, as we have seen, in February, 1728; and it is a little surprising to find the young dramatist suddenly appearing, four weeks later, as a University student. He was entered at the University of Leyden, as "Litt. Stud," on the 16th of March 1728. The reason of this sudden change from the green-room of Drury Lane to the ancient Dutch university must be purely matter of conjecture, as is the nature of Fielding's undergraduate studies, Murphy having lately been proved to be notably erroneous as to this episode. [4] His name occurs as staying, on his entry at Leyden, at the "Casteel von Antwerpen"; and again, a year later, in the _recensiones_ of the University for February 1729, as domiciled with one Jan Oson. As all students were annually registered, the omission of any later entry proves that he left Leyden before 1730; with which meagre facts and his own incidental remark that the comedy of _Don Quixote in England_ was "begun at Leyden in the year 1728," our knowledge of the two years of Fielding's university career concludes. In February 1730 he was presumably back in London, that being the date of his next play, the _Temple Beau_, produced by Giffard, the actor, at the new theatre in Goodman's Fields. The prologue to the _Temple Beau_ was written by that man of many parts, James Ralph, the hack writer, party journalist and historian, who was in after years to collaborate with Fielding, both as a theatrical manager and as a journalist. Ralph's opening lines are of interest as bearing on Fielding's antagonism to the harlequinades and variety shows, then threatening the popularity of legitimate drama: "Humour and Wit, in each politer Age, Triumphant, rear'd the Trophies of the Stage: But only Farce, and Shew, will now go down, And HARLEQUIN'S the Darling of the Town." Ralph bids his audience turn to the 'infant stage' of Goodman's Fields for matter more worthy their attention; and his promise that there "The Comick Muse, in Smiles severely gay, Shall scoff at Vice, and laugh its Crimes away" must surely have been inspired by the young genius from whom twenty years later came the formal declaration of his endeavour, in _Tom Jones,_ "to laugh mankind out of their favourite follies and vices."